Tales of the Amalgam'verse: Endangered Species
by Tarbtano
Summary: In 1995, S.earch for E.xtraTerrestrial I.ntelligence got a signal that wasn't Mysterian. It promised an enhancement of the human race. Faster and stronger, it made many, already seeing the prowess of the Mysterian hybrids, drool. Two tragedies followed from the nightmare unleashed. But rumors always swirled of a survivor in hiding. Last of an endangered Species...
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: This is an Amalgam'verse story. The Amalgam'verse is a compilation universe built upon the 1980s-1990s Heisei Godzilla franchise, but accompanies numerous other monsters and aliens, large and small. Some stories, if fit in, fit easier than others and connect easier. Because of this, think of this as an alternate universe retelling of some franchise tales. For example here, the events of Species (1995) and Species II (1998) more or less happened about the same as they did in the films. The only changes being alien life is already known in this version of Earth (Mysterians landed in the 1950s, King Ghidorah in 1998, the Millennian attacked in 2000, plus multiple races invading all at once during Final War in 2004), the cause of the Species' extinction on Mars was caused by a kaiju, and the reasoning behind Okay'ing the creation of SIL was slightly different. It's at the point of Species III (2004) things really got tweaked.**

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Arizona, 2008  
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MARS, former BioSyn, and BioMajor agent, Lewis Dodgson observed the unconscious form before him which still had half a dozen tranquilizer darts protruding from her back. Ragged, cut, and looking the part of the ragdoll he'd been for a minute or so, he was glad he overcompensated and took the darts meant for large animals and not people. Even then it took an obscene amount to drop this thing…

On some level, he could almost lament that this seemed like the same vicious cycle most crazy experiments were in. In the 1990s SETI finally got a callback that wasn't Mysterian, with keys to an energy source and the means to splice an artificial genome with a human to engender a new species. After seeing the potential in Mysterian hybrids, the US government was biting at the bit for more, and it wasn't like Xilians or humans were explosive breeders. MARS knew what they were up to and watched.

The splicings were made, creating two successful embryos. One was put on ice, but in 1995 one was allowed to mature. Dumbasses at SETI thought making them both female would make them more docile and controllable, something Lewis lamented, as this meant whoever was in charge didn't get out much. The first embryo, SIL as she was nicknamed but Dodgson never bothered to memorize the acronym, was allowed to grow up and apparently did so like a weed on crack. Bunch of crazy abilities too like rapid regeneration, enhanced strength, some form of psychic power that allowed rapid learning, the works.

Well the project that granted her said 'works' freaked out because of them and tried to put her down, driving the then-teenage SIL to break out. MARS tried to trace her, and a company higher up named Winters even managed to pinpoint her location just a hair too late. SIL's species apparently looked for only ideal mates, and by the time she became an adult and was searching, she had a habit of leaving bodies of those less than suitable. Eventually, they stepped back and let the G-Force team, the typical response group to stranger things, handle it. Dodgson remembered Winter and Penward throwing a fit when they found SIL was finally killed by the aforementioned grenade launcher to the face and a lake of fire. Nothing left between the burnt char and carbonic contamination from the crude oil.

So, of course, they tried with the other embryo they had on ice. Fucking idiots…

Okay, okay, Dodgson could agree even if he wasn't necessarily a biologist despite formerly working for BIOmajor and Bio-Syn, that the logic was sound. Keep a specimen in even tighter containment, use hormone treatments to keep her calmer, don't let any males near her to keep the libido down so there's no death by alien Giger supermodel; and use her to find out what makes this species tick in case they come back. Labs kept samples of deadly diseases in containment all the time for research and experiments, so it made sense. They pondered how to collect this "Eve" but it was shelved due to complications.

They didn't count on two things that fateful year of 1998, ones the public weren't let in on given the Zilla debacle in New York.

First was Astronaut Patrick Ross getting infected by a retrovirus the species left behind, rewriting his DNA into a male of the species. Horrified, blood stains on his property porch with a spent buckshot casing indicate he tried to commit suicide via shotgun consumption but blowing his head off just made it grow back with his 'human' side gone. He was a lot less picky with his partners than SIL was, and tried to outdo Genghis Khan. MARS was quick to notice the trail of dead hookers or groupies, all showing signs of a lethally fast pregnancy, and scattered photographs showing small children at Ross' country house. Specimens were attempted to be collected but turned out Daddy Ross was a papa wolf.

But the second part no one expected was for Eve and Patrick to sense each other and that urge to kick in with gusto. Especially when some of the defenses around Eve's containment happened to 'malfunction' the same year Dodgson got out of jail after that blunder on Sorna. 'Just letting nature take its course and preserving an endangered species, I'm a regular environmentalist!'

That was the joke he made, soon laughing his ass off when Eve pulled a SIL and wound up at the Ross ranch. In the chaos, they hoped to scoop up Eve, Ross, or some of Ross' kids.

Only for such a clusterfuck to happen that they just barely missed it, and while MARS managed to sneak into the cleanup operation, the bioweapon they used to kill off Ross' kids while in their cocoons made any remains unviable. Eve and Ross were both dead and taken away, the latter intact. By the time the plan by MARS to run the truck down and take Eve's body geared up to make it look like an accident, Dodgson was greeted with another surprise.

Eve was dead for sure but had just died recently. Right after she gave birth to her and Ross' pureblood offspring. Someone else had been present, but Dodgson didn't have time to do much at the scene before the Feds and GDF began to show up. He'd collected some of her blood and bolted.

Dodgson had dealt with plenty of horrors in his job. He just barely missed out on being on the Shirigami assignment back when he worked for BIOmajor so he dodged meeting Biollante in '89… And instead had walked across Isla Sorna and its InGen dinosaurs, been to BioSyn's and MARS' secret CEO Lord Penward's carnosaur zoo, and seen some of MARS' R&D nightmare fuel. Personally, he'd have preferred the plant...

But none, bar none, scared him as much as his coworker. Jane Tiptree looked great for a woman who was supposed to have died in 1993. If by 'great' you meant potentially towering, though her stature was in flux for her disguises, having chalky gray skin and near pure black eyes surrounded by black veins that made it look like she was weeping blood constantly. Jane Tiptree scared him for a lot of reasons, from being the knowing creator of multiple plagues, being MARS' chief biotechnology developer, and being wanted by the UN and GDF for multiple terrorism, murder, attempted genocide, and innumerable other offenses. That and the fact when she called him to her lab to show him the results, the Mysterian-Human hybrid was in a state he'd never seen before.

In 1998, she was...

_Excited._

A frightening thing when she had enhanced physicality and could throw him across the room. He saw the bodies she left behind in '04 leaving Jericho. He'd seen less brutal animal maulings.

Tiptree was grinning at him. And he, someone who could see dinosaur rampages and not bat an eye about unleashing an airborne version of rabies around him, shuddered.

That grin was what a tiger would give to a goat it cornered, her pale fingers and black nails wrapping around an iron-plated microscope injector so tightly she was bending it.

"The blood you gave me was mixed," she hissed while flashing teeth behind her lips, "And degraded, we need more than just some blood, we need tissue, bone, collagen; everything.

"Well, I couldn't exactly walk off with her corpse after finding it by the roadside. I had a dead guy in the front passenger seat and GDF coming down the road, I got the blood from between Eve's legs after I found out that she'd croaked giving birth," Dodgson huffed back, "You're the expert, you fix it if it's mixed up!"

"You made a good call, Lewis. Wouldn't leave any marks for the Feds to notice, you are smarter than I give credit. But the blood wasn't contaminated by your bungling," Tiptree chuckled, he'd never heard her approach a laugh before and it was extremely unnerving, "It contained fragments of the daughter's DNA. Turns out she and Ross had a girl ..."

She leaned in and Dodgson leaned back. Tiptree's hands clutched the tool tighter with every word, as her eyes widened excitedly, "A much, much better girl."

He think he pissed himself a little, "Better… how?"

"Perfected immunity response. Ross' mongrel brats born of human women showed he had horrific taste for genetics. Faults galore for most of them. Explosive breeders as they are, human sired or bore of the species, unless carefully selected, suffered from genetic vulnerability. That is why the SIL individual was so picky. Patrick Ross was not. A common cold can make the mongrels putrefy over time and the DNA was already unraveling, they'd swarm like locusts but die just as quick," Tiptree snarled at the insolence of fate, "Based off everything I approximate even if any mongrels survived the raid, they'll be dead in six years from pollen infection alone."

Dodgson shook his head slowly while recollecting, "So between chasing them before they die, if any survived, and gunning for the purebred, which fits your fancy?"

"The driver of the ambulance carrying Eve's body left with the baby for a reason," Tiptree snarled.

She briefly paused to ponder the scenario that had happened. Perhaps the driver heard the not-really-dead-Eve convulse and cry out upon going through rapid labor. Perhaps, a clawed hand or spiked tendril was glimpsed in a mirror or even slew the passenger occupant. The driver pulled over to investigate or avoid the small monster clawing its way into the front of the ambulance. There, perhaps spurred by the noises of Eve crying out, he opened the back and found the infant. Either motivated by concern for the baby with other cars coming, will to get away from Patrick's stowaway progeny, or a combination of all; he spirited away with the purebred offspring of a perfected species.

All with, perhaps, a set of small eyes glaring at him.

Tiptree hummed, "I'd gander only a monster the size of a child could stow away so easily. Likely the reason the driver had reason to vacate with the child."

"So one of them might have spooked him. You think the mongrels as you call them know about the purebred's value then?" Dodgson poised.

Tiptree glanced aside in obvious anger, "Assuredly. Eve and Patrick Ross found each other miles apart, the mongrels can no doubt sense the child. Which means they are a danger, not a resource. Their genetic code is not worth studying, but they could contaminate the offspring's lineage."

"So we go for the pureblood for sure," Jane Tiptree hissed, but almost in an excited manner, "And if any of the mongrels survived this time, kill them and dispose of the bodies to keep them out of GDF hands."

Lewis Dodgson panted warily, "Run this dispatch by Winter or Penward?"

"Do you think they'd disapprove? Who do you think approved after my discovery?" Tiptree whispered before thankfully, God thankfully, getting away from him. She tossed the broken tool in the trash, hurling it across the room to do so, "I am working on an Xilian augmentation, now that the Final War nonsense is over. The adaptive genes in this species would be perfect for future work."

She glanced back at him, eyes narrowing behind her pure black hair as veins bulged and pulsed below them.

"Kill off the mongrels, capture the child. Do not let them get to the purebred or they might taint her genome. Winter has already begun searching for where she likely is. The driver is likely trying to play adoption so be prepared to deal with him as well."

Well, wouldn't be the first time Dodgson gave the gravemaker some business for a fat paycheck.

"Game on then."

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2004, Georgia  
============

Lewis Dodgson paced slowly through the obviously damaged household. For a place that looked so innocuous on the outside, this residence of a Dr. Robert Abbot was a regular freakshow on the inside even if the place looked like it had been trashed. Tables had been thrown about, walls had holes in this that looked in a manner he couldn't tell were shotgun blasts or fists, though other marks looked suspiciously like claw marks; and busted doors and windows all about. Looked like a barroom brawl had broken out from the kitchen down to the science lab of a basement.

Dodgson wasn't exactly a lab worker himself, but he'd been around them long enough to know this was some high-end stuff. Expected perhaps.

To the local college town, Dr. Robert Abbot was a kindly middle-aged biology professor. To the more secretive files MARS had access too, one would know he was one of the few surviving SETI project workers who created SIL and Eve, to begin with. And in 1998, he'd been the one to drive off with the ambulance. Meaning he had what they had come for.

"Ah hell," Dodgson grumbled.

They'd found him alright. Here… bit there… Most of him was propped up against a wall looking like he'd been mauled by a tiger. The only reason Dodgson knew it was him was the fact the poor sot's face had miraculously escaped damage. Letting his eyes travel to the other side of the blood trailing coming off the corpse made him double-take and whip out what amounted to a rifle that would be overkill on a normal human.

The thing laying on the floor, half covered in chemical burns with multiple obvious stab wounds and gashes across its chest and face, could only be described as approximating the form of a human. The skin was some kind of exoskeleton and reminded Dodgson of an insect molded into a human shape in more ways than one, including how green, gunky blood trickled from the wounds. Two arms, two legs, single head, typical of what he'd expect for an alien nowadays and fit the descriptions of the prior specimen's true form. And true to descriptions this one wasn't much for clothes either once the claws came out… Including the sharpened, almost dreadlock-like tendrils hanging from the face in place of hair.

A familiar face stepped down the stairs leading into the basement, hopping over a noticeable gap in the structure were part of it seemed blasted out by some force, Dodgson glancing backed to call out to a young Japanese looking woman with short-cropped hair in a stolen police uniform. Or at least she looked so if one ignored the gray Mysterian hybrid skin tone and darker gray veins trailing up her face. Still, the psychic Red Bamboo terrorist operative didn't scare him as much as Tiptree so that was a plus. After all, Red Bamboo, or Dawn as they were considering rebranding, were some of MARS' best customers.

"Find anything?" Dodgson barked, not wanting to look away too much from the scene around him.

"Family photos in a small album, this was the one alright," Taiyou piped up as she flipped through the book of pictures, glancing at small citations besides each, "He had a 'daughter' who went from looking like a toddler to a twenty-something."

"And?"

"Side notes say it took about six years. She was born in 1998, it's her alright," Taiyou muttered as she paced over to Dodgson and held out the book to him.

Sure enough, despite the notes only indicating a little over half a decade, Dr. Abbot's "daughter" had matured rapidly while he looked barely different.

Taiyou tapped said woman's picture, which was labeled with a name, "Patrick Ross and Eve's daughter, Sara Ross… She used his name?"

"So, two horny aliens had a little girl then, after all, I owe someone a bet, "Dodgson shrugged, "Ross is a common enough surname. If she used Abbot and he was never married it probably would just raise flags. Bet their cover was she was adopted…. Wait-"

Dodgson's eyes narrowed at another page of photographs and turned it. The second sheet of photos was set up much the same. With the set being in chronological order showing... What looked like a fetus in a tube, a young boy, and then into a teenager. One that also was rapidly maturing given by the end he looked barely much younger than Sara in a group photo.

"Looks like Dr. Abbot not only had some of SETI's equipment, I think he decided to make one himself," Dodgson muttered and earned a confused look from Taiyou.

"How did he do that?"

"Well given this Paul guy's a blonde and Sara's a blonde, probably used her DNA and tweaked it to make a male, certainly got enough mad science gear to pull it off. Poor sap probably was worried Sara would be lonely," He glanced at the latest photograph, "This one's only a week old, so he's still on the younger side. Guess we'll have to put out a call to look for a 12-year-old boy rapidly aging along with the 25 woman… Unless."

Dodgson apprehensively looked back down at the dead alien at his feet, ignoring Taiyou's startled realization of it, and nudged the hip so the body, previously lying on its belly mostly, was rolled to its side.

He did his best not to focus on the mouthful of fangs the creature sported, or its dim, red-tinted eyes. Instead he forced himself to look lower at something that gave him the answer he wished for but he now wished he never had to remember that sight again.

Yep, this one was definitely a very mature male no matter where this species of space Succubi and Incubi came from. Freaking nudists.

"Eh, he's not her, and not the new guy either I'd bet," Lewis mumbled, "This was someone else."

Taiyou glanced back to him, "So where is Sara-"

Dodgson was jerked aside by a tremendous force grabbing the gun barrel. He looked down while getting pried off his feet in time to see a bloody, sickly looking, but menacingly strong and clawed hand grasping the gun barrel.

His vision briefly spiraled and so much happened in an instant. Taiyou shouted out and something very inhuman snarled. When Dodgson hit the ground, he glimpsed feet sliding across the wet floor and cursed at the realization. The monstrous brute wasn't dead yet!

Thankfully just as soon as it all started… it stopped. Staggering back to his feet, he soon saw why. Taiyou had also been grabbed, but thankfully while her leg was snatched, her hands and more importantly her mind was not. The psychic was bent down on a knee, grasping the alien hybrid of a different crossbreed's scalp in her hands with her fingers knit between his tendrils. The veins on her face were flushed a deeper black with some strands of her hair sticking up on end as an obvious sign of her using her mental powers. In this case, overpowering the mind of a weakened beast.

"You got him?" Lewis grunted, having seen so much at this point this sort of thing didn't phase him.

Taiyou nodded and Lewis, dusting off his pant legs, stepped closer.

Dodgson nodded, "Well, if his mind or memories aren't dead from bloodloss yet, see what happened here."

Taiyou took in a deep breath and focused. The alien sprawled out on the floor shuddered and convulsed lightly, body too weak to protect his mind.

"His name is... Yosef. He was… Patrick Ross' son, born of a human he forced himself on."

"Huh, never took Mars Boy for the type, seemed like kind of a boy scout on TV" Dodgson grunted.

Taiyou shook her head, "Patrick's mind was gone. Nothing human left. Only instinct. All about survival of the species. The same reason… Yosef and his last few siblings came here."

Taiyou looked up, letting the memory overwrite the current visual scape. She saw the lab as it looked while pristine, taken from a view outside the window. Dr. Abbot was manning a computer checking over something. The point of view, Yosef's, glanced aside to a young woman. For a moment she looked somewhat like Sara, but the dark brown hair, taller build, and obvious sores on her skin spoke otherwise.

There was a nod exchanged.

"They had found Sara, tracked her. Some kind of species sense. Yosef and his half-sister Amelia were dying, Sara was their only hope to continue the family. Continue the mission."

Dodgson paused, "Mission?"

Taiyou wasn't sure what she was seeing as she looked deeper and deeper into Yosef's mind, pulling it apart as if to dig into the very instincts itself that drove this lineage. The memories extended far beyond his lifespan but were... Unfocused, scattered. In complete perhaps and only visible in flashes. It showed a redder planet than their world, one who observed Terra from a neighboring place. Hundreds of their kind, flourishing… Until a death song from a three-headed titan descending upon their world.

"To regrow. At all costs. They had a colony on Mars that went extinct, world laid bare… Some kind of monster. They left remnants behind, hoping someone would come to latch onto."

There was a flash in the vision, a substance trickling out of the Martian soil and rushing towards an unaware astronaut. It sunk into him, bonded to him. Remolded him. The sight of the first man to step upon Mars, Captain Patrick Ross, was replaced by a shrieking monster with a fanged maw.

Taiyou hummed, "Flourish in number, replace the humans if needed, adapt to continue. That's the mission… And Sara…."

Yosef and Amelia morphed, the family resemblance being extremely strong now that the dominance of humanity was shed. In an instant they had burst into the basement, shattering the glass window and the covers behind it. Dr. Abbot turned about to face the point of view Taiyou watched in from and shouted something but Yosef acted too fast and seized him.

The more feminine monster seize the doctor's face with her clawed hands, "Wheeeere ah're the'ey?!"

Dr. Abbot panted in obvious surprise, but was keeping a remarkably cool head, "O-Out of your use!"

"LIES!" Amelia backhanded the doctor hard enough she all but rent his cheek on impact alone, "Youe weeere making an'other! A male!"

Dr. Abbot cringed back, bleeding badly down his chest now but keeping composed, "L-Look, I want to help you people! I-I can try and cure you, let you live a long life, but our species can coexist-!"

Yosef tightened the arm lock he had on the doctor, easily threatening to pop a joint out or tear free a limb if he felt so inclined. Desperation had long-since overpowered any attempt at civility. They only had a few months to a year left at most.

Amelia snarled through inhuman fangs, "Th'e male and Sara! WHEERE?!"

"I made Paul with some cleaned up DNA. Just like I can try and do for you two. I-I just-" he wheezed from his shoulder getting craned back from Yosef demanding more answers and Abbot had to shout, "I made him to be sterile!"

"YOU WHA'AT?!" the alien succubus snarled, cocking back a taloned hand to surge forward, only to be stopped by a shout.

"HEY!"

Yosef and Amelia paused, looking to the familiar-sounding source. Standing in the stairwell with a canister in her hands was a tall blonde woman with an extremely perturbed visage about her face. A brief glance was cast to Dr. Abbot and her featured softened for the slightest instant before hardening again at her half-siblings.

"You two want me as our kinds' Eve, well here's your ticket," She huffed while holding the cold storage container aloft, "Eggs from me. Removed years ago."

She held it out and loosened her grip on it, letting it slip half an inch and eliciting a flinch and stalled rush by the siblings before she grabbed it again. Amelia and Yosef exchanged a look, speaking with their glowing eyes. Amelia held her hands upwards and took several steps forward, shifting back into her human form to appear less threatening.

"Now now, how about… we make a trade then?" Amelia whispered as she stepped forward again while motioning backward with her thumb, "After all, we aaare family."

Sara flinched at her elder half-sister's approach and shrunk back briefly, looking at Dr. Abbot, "Stop! Let... him... go... first…"

"Do you not trust we'd want," Amelia eyed the canister of the harvested ovum cautiously, hopefully, "nothing to risk our future?"

"Sara!" An older male voice shouted out and all eyes were upon Dr. Abbot, "You can't! They don't care about humans! If you let the genie out of the bottle they could overrun the planet!"

"Qui'et!" Yosef snarled, jamming his clawed fingertips into Abbot's arms and earning a grunt of pain and flash of worry breaking the stoic fury on Sara's face.

But even through the pain, Dr. Abbot refused to be silent, "One way or another they'll die off without offspring, you're the last- exception! I kept those for you because I trusted you. Be human or be your species. But you can't trust them-"

He saw the smirk on Amelia's face too late. Sara's attention had been entirely on him and he her. Neither had noticed how close the female mongrel had gotten, or how she was moving.

There were no final words. No exchanges. The wide eyes stare was all they could share as Yosef bit through Abbot's skull and right into his brain stem. Sara flinched and quivered as Abbot went stiff and then limp, giving just the chance for an exoskeleton covered hand by Amelia to snatch the canister before she kicked her little sister through the wooden stairs.

Sara went flying into the wall amidst a shower of broken wood splinters.

Yosef, face covered in gore, swallowed the gray matter while dropping Dr. Abbot's body, not minding how his claws shredded the arms and stomach on the way down. Insult to lethal injury. What he deserved for implying they were to perish while humans lived. Amelia spun around and chuckled, wiggling the canister back and forth in her fingers as she paced forward. The intent was clear.

They had what they came for. The only thing left here were a few sterile, soiled degenerations that were useless to propagation. Their time left, previously a death clock, was now all the time in the world. Plenty of equipment and places nearby to make use of. Their kind would rebound, usurp the current life to replace it with something better. Such was their kinds' way of upgrade through modification.

They only froze on their way out from the horrifically loud, roaring shriek that bellowed out from the stairs. Pure blue eyes glared back, reflecting off perhaps a line of tears leaking from them. With speed and agility surprising either of them, a blue armored form came rocketing across the room in a manic fury.

The cold storage tube was targeted first, shattered on impact with a flying fist.

Stumbling back, Amelia and Yosef's visages soon became filled with shock and horror. They cradled their salvation, now their death knell. Fate, begun by the actions of Ghidorah, had finally caught up to their kind. They were now an endangered species doomed to extinction.

And the horrific loss made them glare into Sara's pure blue eyes with their dual red orbs, matching hatred and pain to hatred and pain while their half-sister, the traitor, cradled her adoptive father's body.

Slowly all three rose to their feet, tendrils tensing and clawed fingers flexing outwards.

"I take it she said no to all this pitch?"

Dodgson was starting to put the pieces together, seeing the claw marks across the walls and the busted window leading to the outside. Signs of forced entry and a violent altercation.

He grunted, "Think I can guess they didn't take no for an answer?"

Taiyou nodded, watching it all unfold. Small flashes were all that was visible, but it was clear why exactly the laboratory had been trashed so much. A sight of tendrils wrapping around Amelia's neck coupled with a pair of hands grasping her arm. The blue armored form of Sara's true self smashed her half-sister into a table before hurling her through the glass wall into an operating chair. Judging from the point of view, Yosef responded by blindsiding her choke-slamming the new enemy that doomed his species into a cabinet hard enough to shatter it.

Yosef fell down atop Sara, punching and clawing the female across the face. His red eyes met Sara's blue when their hands locked together in a struggle of strength. Much to Taiyou's curiosity, Sara's reaction was to distend her jaw and suck in a breath while cocking back her neck. In the shadows, through Yosef's eyes, she could see the dame's tongue seem to split open like some kind of four-lipped flower, a spike becoming visible right before it flew out on a tendril and-

Well, now she had an idea of why Yosef was missing an eye and had a hole in half his face. Yet still, despite grievous damage, the three fought on… And on… And on. Taking hits that should have been lethal but either shrugging it off or healing back the wounds.

It was… impressive. The older pair had numbers, but Sara was healthier and stronger due to that.

"Yosef was taken down first," Taiyou glanced over at the shattered exit stairs, "Amelia tried to flee with Sara probably going after her. The fight happened over that. It had Sara's ovum in it."

Dodgson followed her pointing and bolted up to his feet with a wide gaze. He knew what cold storage like this tube the size of a water bottle was for. If it was usable he could-

The lack of cold made his face droop instantly. Dodgson stood back up, flicking off some muck attached to his glove from touching the contents. He was quiet, calm, resolute as he shrugged. Then in one clean motion, he whirled back around, brought back up the gun, and promptly emptied several rounds directly into the half-dead Yosef's head. Taiyou jolted upwards, squawking from getting covered in bits and pieces of skull, exoskeleton, and gore.

The ovum were compromised long ago, the hours it took them to get here had been too late and rot had spoiled them.

Dodgson merely flicked his gun's setting and unloaded a three-round burst into the chest. Much to his frustration, even with the chest warped and punctured by Sara in the confrontation Taiyou had seen, Yosef's exoskeleton and ribs slowed down the bullets to reduce their penetrating power.

Lewis Dodgson's response was to click the setting to full auto and unload the rest of the clip virtually point-blank into the body. With that done, he dropped, swapped the clip, pulled back the rack on the assault rifle, and unloaded again. By now the gun, his pant legs, and a good portion of the floor were covered in ichors. And this time, Yosef didn't budge again with his chest eviscerated and head blown open.

A good ten seconds passed in silence, aside from the panting of a still-startled Taiyou sitting back against an overturned table.

Taiyou shot Dodgson a stiff glare, "Little WARNING next time?!"

Dodgson only growled and turned around, "Another wasted venture. That corpse has a compromised genome and the eggs are long dead. Everything here might as well be useless. ...Call for a cleanup crew. We'll gut the house and replace everything down here with thrift items. Then burn it down. Try and see if you can figure out where the now targets went before the trail goes cold."

They'd later find Amelia met her end at a nearby power plant, though thankfully in a way that meant they had little to worry about in regards to clean up. The fight had been dragged out of the now burning exterior lot of the plant and slide marks lead off into the woods. After some more investigation, they found what looked like a funeral pyre had been set up outside of a storm drain, set to burn before the drainage waters jettisoned anything left downstream. The fact such care was given meant they'd no doubt try to do the same for Yosef, cover their tracks; but either because they could sense him expiring suddenly or them seeing the investigation at the house, MARS' prey was elusive with no traces left behind. Bonus on account of GDF chatter showing it had their attention and MARS didn't want a supplier to become a competitor. Better the GDF kept any indications of this species' continued existence elusive, let them chase ghosts. Dodgson had two real prizes to track.

They were in this to be a monopoly. But, the true prize eluded MARS for years, despite Tiptree's increased eagerness at the prospect of now two targets. A single sighting indicating Sara Ross and a young adult male fleeing town on a train…

===============================  
2006, Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia  
===============================

She stopped in her supply run to look it over, really look at it just for the sake of it even though she'd read the contents a dozen times. A catchy image made up of a collage of white-collar, blue-collar, civilian and soldiers working for a most prestigious institution. Global Defense Force, the group that helped win Final Wars, working on reviving the mecha program to fight kaiju on even footing, foiling smaller monster and human catastrophes while also working for the betterment of mankind.

It was the last part that caught her attention. In so many posters she'd looked over in the earlier 2000s it was always, always humans front and center in the pictures. Didn't matter where they were from or what they looked like, if they were a soldier, a mechanic, a researcher, or a monitor operator. It was always _Homo sapiens sapiens_ triumphing over monsters and extraterrestrials alike.

But this poster, proudly showing off two heroes from the Final War, was outright overt with the aftermath of the Mysterian incursion in the 1950s. The grayed skin, prominent veins around the eyes, the fact Shinichi Ozaki was easily hefting a motorcycle over his head while Miki Saegusa levitated dozens of debris around her. Several other photographs showed mixed squads from the Final War, in one case displaying a hybrid or even full-blooded Mysterian Xilian tackling an Imperial Xilian soldier for the sake of his human comrade.

The message was clear.

The Global Defense Force considered the Mysterians and the hybrids human, just as much belonging on Terra as anyone whose ancestors' history on this world went back further than the 1950s. They were accepted, even asked for. The GDF wanted talent and dedication, whatever someone could uniquely offer.

Adjusting her backpack and letting her eyes travel down to the floor in contemplation, she glanced back up at something she'd spent years avoiding.

The GDF feared SIL, feared the now dead offspring of Patrick Ross. Rightfully so, they could have bred like locusts and overrun the humans in the span of a few years and been terrifying hard to root out. And they'd been running every time the GDF seemed to be snooping around, perhaps suspecting there were survivors of a dying species.

But if they were worried about a population explosion, that had been fixed didn't it? Paul was sterile, she was sterile. And, if they wanted talents to offer, they both had that to spare.

Certainly might beat sleeping in a car half the time and going years on day wages or thievery, that was demeaning.

A silent, almost instinctive mental tug caught her attention and she, without any need to survey, looked over across town to lock gazes with an attractive man sitting in a car obscured by the treeline. The feelings that came to her upon looking at someone Dr. Abbot, her father in all but siring, helped make to be a companion were… mixed.

Dr. Abbot wasn't perfect, as she was reminded after walking off to get in the car.

"We're moving," Paul grunted, "New town about eighty miles down the road for a few weeks, then off to West Virginia."

Sara grimaced and held something back, "Again?"

"Did you need anything?" Paul muttered, not bothering to ask if she had plans. Life for him was all 'Get what you need, live, repeat'.

"It's not a matter of need it's had," Sara griped while crossing her arms, "..."

Paul glanced over at his companion, eyeing her stiffened form and averted gaze, "... You're not wanting to say it."

"No, no I don't!" Sara spat, "Because-"

"We can't risk exposure," Paul started but Sara followed along like clockwork, having heard it so many times.

"-I know, I know…." Sara huffed, "It's not bad logic."

Paul was quiet for a minute as he started them back down the road towards where a small trailer they'd scavenged had been parked, "... What was it?"

"... Just a few drinks and dinner at the diner with a few coworkers. They always did it together and wanted to invite me in," Sarah fumed passively, hand on her cheek while propping her elbow on the door.

"... Anything else?" Paul quipped to pick her brain.

Sara looked over at him, her scowl flattening at seeing a small frown upon his features. Dr. Abbot had drilled into him how dangerous it is for them, in this world. He'd always been paranoid and passed that along to Paul. It was sound. Someone or some groups were always doggedly following them. But on some level, she felt the sneaking temptation to bring up their reaction to quickly bail the moment they got so much as a hint of a pursuer getting closer also meant they never could know who was chasing them or for what reason. And Paul.. and admittedly a few times her own rationalizing someone was onto them could be flimsy at best…. Last time she thought SETI had caught up to them because a guy stared at her for too long and she didn't have the heart to tell Paul it was because she'd torn her jeans.

Sara Ross shrugged, accepting sometimes she was just as paranoid.

Still, a more selfish side craved for them to stay in one place for more than a few months so they could actually enjoy the towns they camped out in. Sometimes survival didn't feel like living.

Least the woods around here were pretty.

Addressing her companion again, Sara shook her head.

Paul contemplated for a moment or two before, perhaps in an attempt to modify her, extended a tendril from the back of his head and caressed her cheek soothingly, "We've got plenty of cash saved up. We can find a diner and have a go at it."

Sara Ross perked, touching at the tendril, "... We almost never eat out. You'd sooner we scavenge the woods for plants or grab a fish."

"Hey, we've gotten pretty good at it after reading those survivalist books," Paul smirked and waggled his eyebrows.

Finally, Sara eased enough to sigh and chuckle. Their relationship felt as rocky as the mountain and forest roads sometimes… but, it was something they'd always have.

Still, a white lie wasn't too bad. They were both stressed and talk about the poster could wait for another day and more opportune time. So, she opted not to tell him about the memorized phone number to sign up...


	2. Chapter 2

===============================================  
**Back in 2008, Morning of the day Dodgson came to town**  
===============================================

The alarm clock bleeped and rang for a good ten seconds before a hand, searching around blindly for it, finally found it and stuck a finger into the top to halt its insistent ringing. A previously resting form slunk her way out of bed, briefly glancing at her clock to ensure she hadn't gone back to sleep and overslept. A truly astounding number of skeletal pops were audible as she got herself up and standing, testing her toes against the floor before hobbling out of the bedroom with a furry form following after.

"Uuuuah… Ah-Shit!" the woman yipped as the cat weaved himself between her bare legs.

She nearly stumbled over on the doorway and having to catch herself on a railing to the stairs. Eyes narrowed as the persnickety feline slinked away, blissfully happy and content his owner would no doubt fetch him breakfast soon. A groan chased after the feline, his owner… or food and snuggles slave wiping a bang out of her face. Well, one net positive was at least the jolt had woken her up more.

Quick trip to the shower and throwing on a few towels, and the tall woman was back down in the kitchen. Her tabby mewled at her, pawing at the air in anticipation and jingling the little pet tag around his neck that had the name 'Clovis' etched into it. Watching the wiggle in his whiskers and twitch his ears in delight, Clovis' young owner couldn't resist giving him a quick rub on the head with her palm before pouring out his kibble. Seeing the cat go to town on the grub, she let the towels drop off her and lazily kicked them to a dirty clothes pile off into the corner before fixing up her own meal.

Exactly eleven donuts, three oranges, and half a liter of milk later; the spikes of hunger had finally been polished off. Picking up the last sugar filled fuel on a finger, the women reclined back on an old, second hand recliner and used her free hand to flip on the window AC unit to let the cool air run over her plates. On her lap and scattered around the chair were half a dozen books, often with written assignments, a few worksheets, and an essay or two wedged into the pages. Picking one up as she swallowed the whole Boston cream, she reviewed her old, "A+" write up before returning to the first book.

Facts and details flew by like wildfire and were memorized instantly-

_Dogs are owned by approximately 36.5% of all American households with a total population of just over 65 million-_

_Cats are owned by a fewer percentage of households but outnumber dogs in total, this increases their change for communicable diseases by roughly 9% more-_

_Crocodilians owned as exotic pets need extra Herpetology notice as they have Avian respiratory and circulatory systems, consult Ornithological care-_

_Horses on average cost 300 USD every year for standard check ups and care-_

Another alarm buzzed and she, with some reluctance, gulped down the milk, closed the book for tomorrow's night class at the university out of town and raced back to the bedroom. A simple long sleeve and jeans combo was thrown on, with attention paid to put in some extra napkins and rags in the pockets in case of spills.

"Hold down the fort Clovis," she quipped as she power walked out, reaching out to pet her feline companion once again before she passed out the front door and kicked it shut behind her.

Stepping into a clearly worn and used car with more rust than paint, Sara Ross' eyes instantly trained upon something in the care.

"GAH!" Her orbs widened and she jolted back, arms up defensively, upon seeing a pair of glowing blue eyes staring at her through the rear view mirror that had been loosely hanging down.

It took her half a second to realize, as the eyes of blue staring at her also widened, it was just someone she recognized intimately. Sara rolled her eyes, reaching up and stroking back several exoskeletal tendrils that resembled dreadlocks of hair.

"Heh, hello beautiful," she snipped as she shook her head, fixing her mirror to more readily show her own reflection. Blue, armored hide changed back into pale, human skin and the tendrils were overtaken by long blonde hair. What looked inhuman became human and Sara just kept looking at herself with mild annoyance.

Changed back in her sleep, again. Good thing her pet cat Clovis was such an accepting housemate, but problems could arise if she'd drove into town looking like how she woke up. Most folks come to work looking like they just rolled out of bed, they'd probably be told to clean up at best or go home at worst. If she showed up with her bed-head, Sara had no illusions to how many would come barreling in on this small, backhills town and whose face would end up all over the news.

Sara held out her palm and rotated her hand about, observing how the blued exoskeleton and talons morphed into lightly tanned skin and innocuous nails. A frown formed, on her visage.

Sloppy. She'd nearly gotten sloppy. She couldn't afford to be sloppy, something Sara was reminded of as she drove into town.

Taylor, Arizona was, in many ways, perfect. Just small enough to fly under most radars, the town's topography map and LANDSAT imagery hadn't been updated in over a decade. Out of the way too, a good two and a half hour drive to anywhere with a population over 4,000 like the university's dwelling. But, not so miniscule one couldn't find some comforts. And, a populace just small enough to fit in easily, but just big enough to blend in without everyone in town needing to know who you were. Fade into the background.

Hide.

Sara's car rolled up to a sort of long abandoned train tracks, the aged wood, let over poles, and gravel paths the last reminder of the metal titans that once thundered through her. Except, right now, she saw one…

Sara Ross' hands clutched the steering wheel so hard it warped the metal through the rubber and plastic, tremors going up and down her arms.

The train, the cargo carrier of two years ago in Virginia, rolled past.

Gone was the wide expanse of Arizona. The dust, the browns, the grays, the yapping coyotes at night and the sun through the scrubwood trees by day.

She was back in Virginia, back in the Blue Ridge Mountains and forests. Back with company a few months after she saw the poster…

**=====================  
Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia**

A very different car sped down a road with a roaring engine bouncing off the walls of the tunnel Sara was speeding through.

"Hang on!" She barked, stomping on the pedal and twisting the wheel as she'd practiced so many times. It would rip into her steering, but parts like that could be replaced.

They couldn't.

The car spun off the main road and went down a barely visible, to a human, gravel trail. With the rain pouring, headlights off in the dead of night, and tall shrubs surrounding the forest road there was only one way to be seen.

"Cut the lights!" Sara yelped through grit teeth as the car continued down rocky and broken earth.

The man sitting next to her was young and fit, but even with his obvious muscle one would be surprised when he lurched over and rammed his hand, fingers first, into the center console. Sparks and the sound of twisting plastic flew through the air, the former bouncing off his short blonde hair and pale skin but Paul paid it no heed. When he wrenched free some of the wires, a single line was delicately gripped between two fingers coated in a plated exoskeleton that went up to his elbow before melding back into his skin. With a flick of his fingers, the line was cut and the brake lights were blackened.

Sara pulled them over into one of many abandoned, overgrown lots on the edge of the valley below and followed the old path.

Her pure blue eyes pierced into the darkness without problem. Thank God for night vision driving.

"Are they still following us?" Sara whispered, hyperventilating.

Paul turned himself around, melding his hand back to the human degree of normality but changing his eyes to a pure green that was decidedly not human to survey the darkness behind them. There were no unmarked trucks or seemingly innocuous cars hiding armed men behind them, nearly forcing them off the road multiple times and decidedly following them for hours.

"Clear," he muttered with panting in his breath, "Who were they? SETI? GDF?"

Sara huffed, "I-If it was the GDF again I might not have kept driving."

That got Paul's attention and he snarled, "Morgan, you can't be serious! Stop joking around damn it!"

"S-Serious?! You think I'm joking!? I'm driving down a dirt and gravel road in the middle of a downpour, running for my life to try and keep us alive from who-knows-who this time," she grunted and stabbed an extended thumb claw into the steering wheel, just to inflict damage on something to vent a bit, "And my name is SARA!"

Green eyes glared back into leering blue. Several years and the two had never butted heads as much as they had in the last few months. Paul insisted on security, survival to the point of insisting on pseudonyms even in private, for practice he assured. Sara wanted to keep the last shred of identity she had from her childhood left, a fragment of dignity with the assurance there were thousands of Saras and Saras in the USA. Paul maintained they have no outside connections whatsoever, live entirely off the grid, and take only day wages in backwoods towns. Sara maintained the wish to actually learn her coworker's first names and, dare she chance it, have a friend. He was assured they, as the last two of their kind, were company enough to one another. Sara brought up they were part human too, and humans needed to be social both for sanity and to not stand out.

Paul, or Jim as he wanted her to call him this time but that would soon change with their residence, wanted to just survive.

Sara, or as Paul had called her Morgan, Sally, Kelsy, Jamie, and a half dozen more; wanted to live.

Sometimes she thought that them being the only two left, and ever would be given they were both sterile, was the only reason she stayed with her companion. For whose sake, she wasn't sure.

The glaring contest kept going for a short time before both were forced to look away for the sake of keeping eyes on the road. It felt like half an hour before one of them finally spoke up.

"... We... can't... Risk it-" Sara frowned at her companion's words as he calmly, as much as he could given his still frustrated tone, "Our species might well be biological weapons. You know how much damage SIL did in just a few days. We're the real life versions of an Incubus and Succubus, breeding like a swarm of locusts and conquering. Faster, stronger, and smarter than humans."

"But we stopped that cycle," Sara whispered, "You can't have children and I had my eggs all removed. We'll be the last. They have nothing to fear…"

Paul, she refused to ever think of him as 'Jim', sighed, "With all the crazy abilities you and I have, like that time I grew an arm back after that logging accident, do you think no one would ever worry we couldn't 'fix' how we were 'fixed'? Do you know you couldn't change your fate?"

Sara was quiet for a short time, just watching the road before replying, "We'd hardly be the only oddballs the GDF took in. If anyone could understand our plight…"

Paul sighed, "It's not that I'm afraid of meeting good people… I'm worried about us meeting the wrong kinds… What if someone unscrupulous managed to get some of our DNA. Enough of an unblemished sample. Enough blood from a medical test, snipping of chitin from an exam, anything. And what if they cloned… it?"

His use of the word 'it' spoke enough for how Paul saw their species. But, it wasn't without good reason as Sara saw it. They have been huge outliers and even then, safety procedures like the sterilization were taken by their own choice to make sure they didn't falter. If just one of them existed, unrestrained and so compelled, just one… Humanity might end up replaced.

Paul wanted their species to go extinct.. And Sara couldn't nor would argue against it. It was more a matter of making their kind's 'retirement' years comfortable. Just because of their potential didn't mean they need suffer for it.

"You don't need to remind me," Sara sighed, "We've had this conversation at least a dozen times."

"... GDF part only thrice, full count is about thirteen though," the brightening in his inflection was noticeable and she followed suit.

"Baker's dozen," she sighed.

Paul reached over with some hesitation, placing his hand on the central console while maintaining a vigil of the road behind them. With a few second's span, Sara placed hers atop his. Nothing romantic, nothing overtly loving, but a reassurance of presence. Perhaps, it meant more to the last two of an endangered species.

"We'll talk about it in the next town we get to," Paul mumbled, "Consider all options."

Sara cocked an eyebrow, "... Seriously?"

Paul took in a deep breath and shrugged, "I didn't say yes, Morgan, but… Finding safety might not always mean isolation."

Sara Ross took in a deep breath and sighed, patting his hand, "Next two towns over. Better safe than sorry."

The air in the car began to lift into the disrupted silence of the rain pinging off the windshield and roof. Oppositional views they might bear, but they'd have torn each other to shreds by now if they weren't willing to compromise. How far that went would remain to be seen. She was looking before them, Paul was looking behind them; covering each other's backs…

They should have looked up.

In an instant, all hell broke loose.

Bullets roared as they skimmed across the edge of the road, barely missing most of the car as several punched holes in the roof. Sara swore and swerved, lurching forward after being forced to brake least she slam into a tree. The car weaved and fishtailed as she glimpsed through the rain soaked windshield, the tiny, distant form briefly visible amongst the lightning. A drone that was twisting around to come for another strafe.

"We got company!" Paul roared, making the entire situation infinitely worse off. Stealing a glance at a side mirror, Sara figured out what he was on about.

Multiple headlamps of ATVs and motorcycles were speeding along through the forest and onto the road behind them, starting to gain no matter how much she stomped on the accelerator. Gauges on the dashboard were falling regardless of her efforts, and if she could look behind themselves better she might have seen trails of fluid streaking out from under the car. They'd been hit.

A thousand questions burned in through both of their minds as the drone came swooping in for another run.

Who were these people?

Why were they hunting them? What had given them away for them to be found?

Why the troops? They couldn't be just trying to kill them or the drone would be packing explosives.

Why couldn't life just cut them a break for once?

And another sprung up when Paul slung himself backwards and launched a tendril from his back that gouged in through the backseat and dug into the car mechanics below with such force that even when he retracted the tendril, its tip was mangled and bleeding.

Sara got her answer to at least that last question when the cab became flooded with the smell of gasoline and her gas gauge started plummeting. A hand grabbed her and ripped off her seatbelt.

"P-Paul what are you?!" She spattered but was in too much of a shock to try and control the car as it was pilfered again with bullets.

"Forgive me," the quiet in his tone was contrasted with his extremely inhuman sounding voice.

A glance at her companion confirmed he barely passed for humanoid, much less human. Exoskeletal skin, biomechanical dreadlocks for hair, almost insectoid green eyes, and a mouth full of fangs set behind metallic facsimiles of human teeth. A taloned hand gripped her thigh and stabbed said claws in. Sara shrieked in pain and reflexively took her true form. But in the adrenaline tremors flooding her vision, she couldn't react quick enough to stop him from lunging forward and biting down on some of her hair tendrils as hard as he could; severing them. In her daze, she saw how the road stopped up ahead. Sara tried to turn the wheel but Paul's hand caught it and kept them on course. Her blood coating the steering wheel and dash, Paul ripped open the driver side door and… the monster sobbed.

"Don't die Sara."

He shoved her mate out of it just as they passed a gradually sloping thicket. Sara hit the ground rolling as Paul, her decoy body parts, and a car full of gasoline went off the roar and went careening into the valley below.

Sara Ross tumbled head over heels down hill until she came to a stop impacting a tree hard enough there was a wet, bony crack. She lay still for a moment, rain falling down her dirtied and cut body as she lay limp. There was a sliding pop, ridges under her skin coiling around a budget created by displaced vertebrae and applying pressure. Sara's fingers and arms twitched, but not her lower body. A shaking, convulsing hand reach back and placed a clawed finger to the lump on her spine. Teeth, fangs, gnashed as she braced and pushed. The bony snap caused her back to arch and straighten, the mound pushed back into place. Legs, who's covering shifted back and forth between smooth, dirtied skin and dark exoskeleton, writhed and quivered. Her spinal cord reconnected and regenerating, Sara stabbed her fingers into the bark of a tree to claw and stagger her way to her feet.

Her huffing pants were drowned out by the rolling of thunder above, pouring rain drenching her, and rumblings of fire down below. The car, and all the occupation therein, was a bonfire of embers and sparks. One of the few things that could kill their kind, as outside of small amounts they were no more immune to flame than any other soul.

Against some distant hope, her blue eyes watched on, hoping to see some armored form slipping away under cover of darkness. Another faked death. Another cunning escape by them. They'd separate for a week or more, fall back, and then rendezvous somewhere else….

Nothing.

The rain fell down her face as she sank to her knees, a stubbornly human feeling making her paw at her chest.

Nothing came from the cast. Nothing emerged. Nothing stole away. Fire could kill them, keep them from healing effectively in large amounts. Paul knew it, and did it on purpose. He feared their kind's blood or tissue getting into the wrong hands, but the wreckage impact and flames meant there would be nothing usable other than charred husks. And between all the mass writhing of tendrils, limbs, and disfigurement of a body that comes with a four story nosedive of a car crash, it would be almost impossible to tell how many were there.

Only she got the faked death this time…

Cold stabbed through her, blocking out almost all of the world save for the distant lights and shouts of their pursuers. Sara Ross hung her head.

Couldn't run. Couldn't fight such a large group in her condition. All she could do as she did best.

Staggering towards the embrace of running water, careful only to step on rocks to avoid leaving footprints, Sara let the running flow of a creek carry up to her knees. Taloned hands and sharp tendrils stabbed into the grim and mud at the bottom of the stream. Withdrawing several scoops that were stacked before the hole, she dove into the cavity dug and tunneled within. The rain and waterflow quickly melted down the compiled mud, beginning to entomb the burrow. In a watery, dirty, claustrophobic tomb, Sara Ross curled into a ball and hugged herself for a small measure of comfort.

She'd hide here, for days if need be, she'd survive. There was a promise to keep after all… Even if she'd have to do it alone now….

Back in the present, Sara let the moment and tremors pass, wiping her eyes before stepping back on the accelerator to resume her route to work…

A reasonably good looking, if not especially youthful man sat swirling a glass at the bar. The owner had spot him a glass of water with the excuse the bartender was running a bit late. That statement gave Lewis Dodgson a hint of shaded wariness. Ever since Nedry's foolishness he'd all but given up trying to look like some kind of secret agent, instead just sitting casually with a typical polo shirt and slacks as he fiddled with his phone, texting a message on a secure carrier no public passerby might recognized.

Lewis.D: Owner says Ross is running late.

….

Jane.T: Has she fled?

Cameron.W: Drone cam over the town keeping track of who leaves on the roads. Nothing.  
….

Jane.T: MARS lost her on foot once before back in Virginia.

Cameron.W: Keep you posted. Just remember to rock the borderline silverfox look.

…  
Lewis.D: Funny. I'm a sapper, pitchman, and recruiter, not MARS' honeytrap.

Cameron.W: Short straw this time Lewis. Don't worry, this species has a high libido. Just string her along.

Lewis.D: A libido I don't want to see. Just keep back up on a hair trigger.

Jane.T: It is. Recover the asset, all of her if you can.

The door to the bar opened and a friendly face paced into the establishment with a work uniform on full display. Dodgson didn't mind letting his eyes glance up and down some in tandem with her stride. His brow raised and he resisted an internalized wolf-whistle. For a freakish monstrocity, this Ross asset cleaned up good. Shame the other alien witch he knew personally was too scared to be attractive.

She seemed to pause momentarily while walking up, glancing about. Dodgson hitched in his nerve momentarily, preparing for anything. His hand stealthily reached for a pistol hidden inside his coat.

Unbeknownst to the MARS agent, Sara Ross' nose crinkled as she glanced around nonchaleontly. Amidst the scent of strong alcohol, rubber, polymer, and leather by the guests' attire, there was a subtle hint of something else. Something no one was supposed to have in a bar and she knew all too well from prior near death experiences.

Lots of gunpowder. Tranquilizers. And a lot of… She resisted a shiver or sneer at the smallest, faintest whiff of something already dangerous to a human but even worse to her kind. Hydrochloric gas.

And all of it was coming to the not-too-shabby looking chap in the bar stool ahead of her, giving her information all too obvious why he'd be carrying or recently have been around all that. This was, after all, a small town.

She hid a wrath behind a cheerfulness. Grief for Paul masked by the flirtation.

"Help you with anything?" Sara Ross piped cheerfully as she advanced to the opposite side of the bar of the man.

They drank, they chatted, they ate. And hours later upon his return, she invited him back to her place...

Sara stole away for a moment at the bar near closing of her shift. The fact her 'date' for the night, Louie, didn't try to stop her retreating to the back didn't loosen her tension about him. The tremors in her vision had settled in soon after she'd finished her drink, and while the drugs within them weren't nearly strong enough to knock her out she intentionally played up how wobbly her footing was to throw him off. Only she knew it be a temporary reprieve.

She'd been found.

By whom she didn't know but this panic was sending her mind into a frenzy of questions on what to do.

Circle back around and try to sneak into her car? No, if whoever it was coming after her had an agent meeting her in person they'd no doubt have help they could summon and a car be easy to track in daylight.

Confront this man directly and drop all pretenses? That could go south very fast even if she could very easily overpower him, who knew what else was around.

Book it on foot? Sure she'd have to assume her true form to move quick enough and probably risked getting sighted, but she'd be much harder to track and she could live off the wilderness if needed for a time.

But that was assuming she could adequately hide and on foot she'd be even more exposed, if harder to follow.

A cold, emptiness festered when she thought back to her residence. Her classes, books, Clovis snuggling up to her to butter his owner up for some canned kitty food, even a half decent job that put a roof over her head. That life she'd been chasing started in Arizona and, selfish as it was, ditching it all left her chilled. She didn't want to just survive and Sara did not wish to let things go so easily.

No, no she was fighting for this!

Mind working at a thousand miles a second, she snuck into the kitchen and eyed the shelf near the door. Making sure the cook wasn't looking, Sara reached out in a way she ensured she wasn't visible from the counter her 'date' was sitting at and snatched the phone. There was a temptation to ask Charlie, with little doubt he'd mind her borrowing it for a call under a simple excuse her's had died; but she stifled it.

Whole reason she wasn't using her own number was risk someone who knew who she was, what she was, would be listening in. Logically thought it be a lot harder to guess some random coworker's number would be tapped too. Wasn't perfect, but it have to do.

As did the rest of her plan as she dialed up a number recalled from perfect memory. Given how crucial the center she called was, thankfully there was next to no wait time, just barely allowing her time to sneak into the employee area's deepest reaches.

"Global Defense Force Call Center 98, what's the purpose of your call?"

Sara stole herself briefly before shoving past the final barrier Paul and her father had given her, safety or not this was an event horizon, "I have information of critical importance to report."

"I'll connect your information in, but ma'am understand this sort of thing is of such critical importance that there are extremely hefty fines and probable prosecution for pranks."

"OOoh this is no prank!" Sara snipped.

"Tell me what's the subject matter. I'm getting this call from rural Arizona, I already have the local police's contact if this is not-"

Sara leered, "SETI 1998. Project SIL. Project EVE. Astronaut Patrick Ross. Try. That."

Through the phone, she could hear someone typing.

Forest Oliver grumbled as he typed the context keywords in. Some of it seemed interesting, especially with the lady, on a number suspiciously prescribed to a man, mentioning the name of the first man on Mars who died about a decade ago. The rest sounded like Grade A tinfoil hat. Still, she didn't start cracking and scrambling an apology or yell out wrong number like a caller an hour ago when he called bullshit on 'I just saw Giant Cyborg Gila Monster outside Las Vegas, you gotta evacuate!'. Some people, some morons, don't understand an incorrectly called kaiju-attack was a thousand times worse than yelling 'BOMB!' in a crowded building. Traffic jams, building and shelter collapses, people could die if it wasn't properly managed and he had no patience for this sort of thing.

Which is why he was both slightly relieved and shocked when the results of those inputs into the protocol program instantly went to Code Orange. On a scale of Blue to Red, that was almost as bad as 'Confirmed Kaiju making a beeline for the metropolis, 10 minutes outbound!'. In essence, this was way about the typical dispatch.

"H-Holy…. M'Ma'am hold on, I'm transferring you up!"

Sara's brow perked when she caught who it was picking up. Could practically smell the testosterone coming through the line.

In his office at the GDF's American Headquarters, a powerful man with a bushy mustache glanced at the phone to his ear, "This is G.D.F. Regional General Douglas Gordon. Miss, you really know how to pick your topics. Do you have sight on the second generation alien hybrid?"

"You're talking to her," Gordon's brow perked as Sara continued, "I'm Eve and Patrick Ross' daughter. My name is Sara."

Gordon shifted at his desk, silently calling up Ozaki and Miki on his tablet, "Well, Miss Sara, we've been looking for you for a long time. And thanks to this call we know exactly where you are. Mind informing me of why the change?"

Sara hissed lightly, trying to keep herself controlled from the residual headaches, "Because I don't want to run anymore and if you're agent keeps trying to drug me, I'm going to take those tranquilizers and shove them into his-"

"We don't have any agents near you," General Gordon quipped, stern but calm to try and defuse this issue as the implications ran through his mind, "If he's serious, this guy isn't with us."

"... Shit," Sara sighed, "I was hoping he was so this whole thing could de-escalate."

"You and me both now," Gordon grumbled, dialing up several American units, "I can offer you GDF protection in exchange for turning yourself over."

"That's actually something I'd been wanting to do for awhile now General. I'm sterile. I'm no threat to humanity nor do I ever want to be. SETI's fears won't happen with me," Sara whispered, eyeing the front of the bar and conscious of how much time had passed.

"Very well, if you come quietly sweetheart, I'll promise you GDF protection."

Her face chanced to lighten, "I-I've been wanting to help. I just want to live. I'll happily help the GDF out anyway I can. I think I can offer plenty."

"Sara, I'll make you a deal."

She perked up in a silent pause to beckon him to go on.

Gordon stood up from his desk and headed to his exit, grabbing his overcoat, loaded pistol, and sword, "Find out who this other agent is, detain him for a few hours, and I'll see to it that you're not some labrat and have a job here. If you can do that without getting captured, you're more than capable of joining us. If you're up for it, Sweetheart."

Sara saw the danger. Saw the threat. The risk. Not only for releasing a horrid monster on humanity if someone less than savory got a hold of her species, but her own species' very extinction.

And yet, there was a glow within. A festering of a benevolent kind. Survival was not always living. And living entailed some risk.

No more running.

"I'll do it, my address is 224, 12th Street. Come as fast as you can."

"Consider yourself deputized by the GDF. Now I'll need you to trust me and hang up, if you stay on the enemy will grow suspicious," Gordon started out of his office and power walked to the transports with teams on the way, "Be careful, it'll still take us a few hours to get there."

"I don't die or get captured easy, General…" She held her breath and nodded, "Signing off."

She secretly returned Charlie's phone and set back for the front, intending to grant this 'Louie' the prize of a stunner of a blonde taking him back to her place...

"MARS and Winter aren't paying me enough for this…"

He growled under his breath, keeping the rifle at the ready. He already looked like a wreck, frankly he could be favorably compared to some poor sod that had gotten dragged behind a horse for a mile or two. His brown-blonde, short crop hair was a dirty mess and his sunglasses were missing a lens. His kevlar vest had been torn to fibers and the long sleeves under it had as well, blood trickling down his arm from multiple claw wounds that would have flayed him alive if he wasn't wearing gear under his business suit.

Bitch even shredded his hat!

For a master saboteur and career spy by a very unlawful but very profitable weapons manufacturer, MARS Corp needed to give him a raise, big time. Especially when Tiptree and Cameron Winter wanted to sent him after a highly dangerous alien bitch. Seriously, they were rolling in cash from weapons contracts ever since the world got full of monsters, he deserved a pay increase.

Plan A had been a very, very thorough bust. After fooling her into a date, Dodgson took the very human-looking target on a full night on the town but she just refused to drop already. Delirium pills in her drink, stealthy burst of anesthesia gas in the elevator doubly over, a full cocktail of tranquilizers in a two course dinner that could knock out a horse; the works. Finally he decided 'Fuck it' and tried shooting her with a pair of darts that would have dropped an elephant. She got a hold of him for about ten seconds and managed to put him through the ringer in just that amount of time before the drugs kicked in. It dropped her for a time, so much he thought she was dead for a moment and was calling it in. Jane might still have a use for a corpse, but Lewis Dodgson could admit he was almost disappointed.

Sara Ross, last surviving member of an experimental species gone horribly wrong, down and out like that? Weren't these things supposed to be super hard to kill by anything short of ludicrous damage? Short of a unique biological weakness with an infected astronaut who mutated into a male variant of the species, the report he heard was that the first of SETI's labrats to escape took a grenade launcher to the face and a flaming oil lake to die.

Sara Ross was passed out on the floor behind him in the isolated apartment, tied up and handcuffed after face planting from the tranquilizers still stuck in her back kicking in.

But Dodgson could admit, even knowing he'd shot her with enough drugs to knock out a horse. This was… kind of underwhelming….

"Dodgson here," Lewis voiced into a small earpiece he'd kept hidden.

MARS' public chief executive and Penward's right hand, Cameron Winters was patched through, "Winters, go ahead."

"I got the bitch down and out."

"Are you sure this is her?"

Lewis glanced back at the unconscious blonde, seeing she was still breathing despite several darts being more than enough to kill a man twice her mass, "Yep, this is the asset that escaped us in Virginia alright. Get a team over to help pick her up."

"Nervous around our latest lady?" Cameron chuckled as he, sitting in the field office, pushed the keys to direct a squad over, "Or has Jane turned you off women of the alien variety for good?"

"Oye, just get them-" Dodgson froze, having paced and turned around to look out the window. And put his back to his quarry.

It was then he heard a very, very inhuman hissing and the sound of ropes, chain links, and metal snapping. It was at this point Dodgson started to realized he had been victorious. He had been humored. And now her patience had worn out.

"Dodgson?" Cameron muttered with a perked brow, unable to see but able to hear.

Dodgson tightened the grip on his gun. No, not his dart gun; this could pass for an elephant gun. In the dim light of the apartment living room, he saw the light of the sole ignited lamp illuminate a spiny, feminine shadow across his own.

He thought tonight had been underwhelming. _God damn his phrasing._

Dodgson snapped around and fired as a scaly, armored hand grabbed the barrel, glowing blue eyes glaring back at him as Sara stood up to her full height.

Okay, far as Dodgson was concerned, now Tiptree had some competition for 'Scariest bitch on the planet'!

Over the com-link, Cameron Winters clearly heard Dodgson pull the trigger and upon spying a commotion of another kind, perked his brow. Upon the electronic map before him, another signal was rapidly making a beeline for Dodgson's position.


End file.
